Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/697

No. 6.]  intensity is transmitted to motor-centres. The command to perform an act awakens in the hypnotized subject an idea of the act. Now, even in normal consciousness, every idea of a movement is in consequence of the firm association between the sight and word image and the muscle sensations, accompanied by an impulse to execute that movement. But the normal consciousness suppresses this impulse, while the hypnotic condition cannot resist it, because the counteracting forces are absent. Similarly, a visual idea aroused by a word takes absolute possession of the mind, the thought that it is not reality but imagination cannot arise. Its intensity is raised to the strength of sense-perceptions. All voluntary acts in the hypnotic state possess the character of impulses. Attention is passive, giving itself up to the prevailing motives. The central physiological condition of this degradation of will to passive willing is the suppression of the innervation of the apperception-centre. Sense-impressions reach the sense-centres, but cannot awaken processes in the apperception- centre, because the forces in both are latent. But when a certain impression partially succeeds in overcoming the obstruction in the apperception-centre, the energy liberated from this is transmitted to the sense-centre or motor-centre whence the impulse came. Post-hypnotic states are brought about by the recollection of associations that have been made by preceding suggestions, and are now awakened by one of the members of the association. The entire state of consciousness to which a certain idea belongs is renewed by the reproduction of this idea. Hypnotism cannot become, as has been held, an experimental method. There can be no psychological experimentation without careful self-observation, and this is impossible in the case of the hypnotic subject. Hypnotism belongs to the sphere of medicine, the physician being the only person who should be permitted to practise it, and then only for therapeutic purposes. An unrestricted exercise of this privilege is to be condemned out of regard for physical and ethical health.

F. maintains that it is impossible to explain will as the development of a simple mechanical reflex action, without going beyond the hypothesis and supposing a psychical point of departure. If the mechanical reflex theory were true, one would expect to find this type of actions manifested more and more clearly as we descend in the animal scale. A study of lower animals shows, however, that such mechanical acts are almost absent, and that the appetites — hunger, thirst, etc. — determine their movements. Again, although we find that acts at first performed